The Man Who Quit Money - Mark Sundeen
Told through the third person perspective, Mark Sundeen shares the story of Daniel Suelo, a 39 year old man, who comes from good origins, a good family, and yet still finds himself unsatisfied with life. Not to say that life satisfaction is determined by where you come from and the circumstances you find yourself in. Daniel’s story shares anything but that. In the year 2000 Daniel James Shellabarger left his life savings in a phone booth and in doing so he began the great escape of the money economy all together and ridded himself of the illusion that the commercial pocket is the foundation of a key society.
He recognizes that first, as an American society we have become so diluted with the misconception that to be a valuable asset to society, we have to contribute our very souls into the monetary system. We must relinquish our ability to be completely able and free and donate a huge part of ourselves to the American standard of living. Including abiding to the heteronormative lifestyle, normalizing the 9-5 shift system, and even endowing into the beloved European foundation of evangelical-christain ethics that bargain our free will with the weaponization of faith.
The Man Who Quit Money is an exhibition of the rebirth of a man who chose a lifestyle free from capitalist ethics and remained sane, happy and healthy, without receiving or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, hold paycheck jobs or receive any government welfare, and through his decision to do so he has received much criticism from his blog that he writes from from a public library. His critics say that by dissociating himself from society, yet still choosing to be a part of it, (such as using a public library or taking a public bus) he is still a byproduct of capitalism. Though he lives in Utah canyon caves and only consumes what nature or the world already has to offer, he acknowledges that even by the almost complete abolition of his carbon footprint, he will always be a byproduct of the money world he was brought into.
“Ever since he'd given up money, certain people had called him a freeloader, a parasite. (As one comment-thread malapropist put it: "Do you Believe you are smooching off others?") They demanded to know what he was giving back. To which Suelo asked, Who says you need to give something back? What does a raven give? What does a barnacle give, or a coyote? In his view, every living thing gave plenty, merely by existing. But from a strictly materialistic view, his critics had an excellent point. A raven contributes nothing, except of course his own corpse, which will feed some other being. Now Suelo was dying, and he offered his body to the ravens, the coyotes, the ringtails, the mice, the ants.”
― Mark Sundeen, The Man Who Quit Money
Suelo’s decision to dodge the American economic lifestyle did not begin as a political statement, it was simply executed with the devote plan to find himself by reconnecting his being with where the human body was first found: in nature. The book does not suggest that by being a member of society you are a capitalist money hungry rat racer, instead it reminds us of the connectivity between earth and soul. Suelo’s decision in the year 2000, was a result of traditionalism breaking down his true passions and identity, nearly killing him, literally. After finding himself alive, his car wrecked on a cliff side, he considered this miracle as an opportunity of rebirth. He disappears from the life of Daniel Shellabarger and renames himself Suelo, meaning earth or soil. He reincarnates himself into a man who disconnects himself from the repudiated modern cash economy. Yet it isn’t his distance from money, or ability to live without it that makes this book as wonderful and ethereal as it is, it’s his philosophical prospects that grow and develop that allows him to become happy, much happier than he would have been if he had chosen to stay within confinement of monetary policy. The book does not put to shame the system we were all inevitably born into, but it poses self reflective questions that allow us to ask, "what makes us happy?” and pushes for self search. Do the general decisions we make, from a college education, to the acceptance of stacking up our resumes, exist by default or by design? The Man Who Quit Money inspires us to imagine how we might become better versions of ourselves and of our expectations.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment”
― Mark Sundeen, The Man Who Quit Money
The book crosses over chapters that reveal his previous life as Daniel Shellabarger, a man with a college education, a lifetime of christian fundamentalism, and an idealistic childhood of youthful disillusionment to his radical embarkment of "the good life”. One of the first connections I made as I began to read the book, was how Mark Sundeen carries each chapter by switching back and forth from the name Suelo and Daniel. In the first few chapters Daniel was a man who lived life amongst the rest of us, he was a college graduate, a tax-payer and what we consider, the societal norm. As Sundeen reveals Daniel’s unhealthy relationship with his personal identity, and those around him, he transitions into utilizing the name Suelo, a philosophical man whose life is lived best as a dumpster diving cave man. The names are not exactly interchangeable, though he is speaking of the same person, but they are used to convey two different lifestyles.
Suelo doesn’t only make us question the economic system in which we unknowingly give ourselves away to. He enables for the reconsideration of all societal normatives, including our depiction of christian fables, our views on homelessness, our subliminal conformity, and our domestic political wars.
“voluntary poverty had a long history in nearly all world cultures—from Buddha to Jesus to Mohammed to Saint Francis—yet was generally practiced only by monastics, who combine vows of poverty with vows of celibacy.”
― Mark Sundeen, The Man Who Quit Money